These days everybody wants to know what you were doing when the world came to an end. Fools make up all sorts of vainglorious self-serving plep— but me, I tell the truth. I was chasing a girl.
-- Narrator

Importance: The narrator is so reliable primarily because he is so honest and transparent, with nothing to obscure or hold back in order to make himself sound smarter or cooler than he was. From his first sentences, he admits his romantic foolishness in a way that also designates him as a witness to the end of the world he mentions, and himself and obvious survivor. Although his story sounds incredible, the reader can accept the narrator's recounting as faithful and respectful to the victims and survivors.

For six, seven months it was just a horrible Haitian disease—who fucking cared, right? A couple of hundred new infections each month in the camps and around...
-- Narrator